united with its spiritual counterpart, and his soul
sought the embodiment of that union in the flesh. This he did not find in
the perfection and completeness which from his inner view he knew to exist.

Barriers of caste, or class; of time and space; of age; of race and color;
of condition; may intervene between counterparts on the physical plane;
nay, one may be manifesting in the physical body and the other have
abandoned the body, but as there is neither time nor space nor condition to
the spirit, this union may have been sought and found, and _reflected to_
the mortal consciousness, in which case marriage with anything less than
the _one_ true counterpart would be unsatisfactory, if not altogether
objectionable.

With this view in mind, Seraphita becomes as lucid a bit of reading as
anything to be found in literature.

Seraphita is the perfected being--the god into which man is developing, or
more properly speaking, _unfolding_, since man must unfold into that from
which he started, but with consciousness added.

Everywhere, in ancient and modern mysticism, we find the assumption that
God is dual--male and female. The old Hebrew word for God is
plural--Elohim.

Humankind invariably and persistently, even though half-mockingly, alludes
to man and wife as "one"; and men and women speak of each other, when
married, as "my other half."

That which persists has a basis in fact, and symbolizes the perfect type.
What we know of marriage as it is to-day, proves to us beyond the shadow of
a doubt, that the man-made institution of marriage does not make man and
woman one, nor insure that two halves of the same whole are united. The
highest type of men and women to-day are at best but half-gods, but these
are prophecies of the future race, "the man-god whom we await" as Emerson
puts it. But that which we await is the man-woman-god, the Perfected Being,
of whom Balzac writes in Seraphita.

It has been said that Madame Hanska, whom the author finally married only
six months previous to his death, was the original of Seraphita, but it
would seem that this great affection, tender and enduring as it was,
partook far more of a beautiful friendship between two souls who knew and
understood each other's needs, than it did of that blissful and ecstatic
union of counterparts, which everywhere is described by those who have
experienced it, as a sensation of _melting or merging into_ the other's
being.

Seraphita is the embodime